4
Getting around with a cane wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Plus, it didn’t take Tisha long to realize she was pushing herself again. But she wanted to take a look at this house more than she’d wanted anything in a while. So instead of doing what she knew she should have, like resting, she and Burt made their way to the big antebellum house.
“Want me to go in, and take some pictures and send them out to you?” She glared at the man who had been her constant partner since they’d left the house that morning. At his laugh, she wanted to take her cane to his head. “You’re looking a little green around the neckline, miss. Just do me a favor and sit here and rest. I won’t say a word to your dad if you do that.”
“You won’t anyway.” He said nothing. “I need to make plans, Burt. You understand this, don’t you?”
“I do. I really do. But these plans will be for nothing if you overdo it and end up back at the hospital.” She knew this as well. “Rest. I’ll see if they have a drink or two, and we’ll go from there.”
When he went inside the house, she watched two couples come out. They were talking about the house. How beautiful it looked and that they couldn’t believe how much young Douglas had grown up. She listened to them, trying hard not to appear so as one of the couples described not just the house, but the kitchen.
“I love the countertops the most. And did you see that stove? I could cook such a big meal there.” The man with the woman asked her if she even knew how to cook. “Yes. I just don’t care to cook for the two of us. But that house, doesn’t it just scream entertaining?”
“No. What I got from it is comfort. In every room on every floor. The bathroom with the clawfoot tub was perfect, the stand alone shower big enough to share. And that fireplace? Man, whoever worked on it, they loved their job.” The entertaining lady asked him what he meant. “The eye for detail. The wood in the room is perfect, even with all its imperfections.”
“Perfect imperfections? That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” As they moved off the big porch and to their cars, she knew she needed to see this house more than ever. As soon as Burt came out with a glass of iced water, she knew he was impressed with what he’d seen as well.
She told him to tell her about it. “You’re not going to want to leave here unless you make an offer. I kid you not, miss. This house is so full of beauty, you’re going to love it. I do too. And the kitchen is a dream…even you, who can’t boil water, will love it.”
As they made their way into the front entrance, she fell in love. The flooring, parquet oak, met them with a bright shine, and the cherry pieces that danced around the room made the entire area seem welcoming and inviting. They made their way deeper into the room just as a couple was entering where she thought the kitchen was. A woman met her at the doorway to a large open living area.
“Hi, I’m Susie Douglas. I’m helping my brother-in-law show the house. I don’t think he figured this many people would show up.” Burt asked her how many they thought had come through. “Over two hundred. I know that a lot of them just wanted to look around, but the interest in buying the house is outstanding. And for good reason.”
As Susie told them about all the work that had gone into the room they were in, Tisha looked around. The tin ceiling had been painted to match the crown molding; the floors, knotted pine, were polished to a nice flat glaze. Even the furniture, period pieces that had been well cared for, made a person want to not just sit down and kick off their shoes, but to snuggle up on the couch with someone special. Tisha turned away from that thought. There would be no one like that in her life.
The dining room was huge. The built in cabinets would hold a lot of dishes, and big windows let the afternoon light shine in and brighten the room. The lighting, small and well placed, would make the room beautiful even on the cloudiest of days. She ran her hand over the large plank table and felt like she was stepping back in time, to a place that was well before her age, but no less wonderful to her.
The stairwell to the upper levels was left untouched by her. She wanted to go up, needed to see the master suite she knew was there, the bed with the four posters that someone had picked out with her in mind, but she wasn’t able to manage it.
“You can use the elevator.” Tisha looked at Susie, almost afraid to ask her if she was kidding. “When they started the renovations to the house, no one even knew it was back there. Someone had hidden it behind a false wall, and when it was uncovered, not only were they able to restore its original beauty, but managed to get it working again too. Mason and Jace worked for two days on it. They’re the tinkers of the family.”
“Oh, Douglas. You’re related to Emma.” Susie grinned and said that she was. “I completely forgot her married name until you mentioned her husband. I never met him, but.... I’m Tisha Porter. My dad is Randall Porter.”
“Yes, she talks about you all the time.” Tisha assured her that it was probably all true. “I hope so. I’m so glad to meet you. Are you looking for a home here in town again? Emma said that you’ve been staying with your dad.”
“I have, and yes, I’m very interested in this house. I remember it as a child. I was never invited in. I think they thought that Emma and I would vandalize the place if we were allowed in. We were not the most well behaved little girls.” Tisha laughed at her own memories. “I’d very much like to see the rest of the house, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes. That would be.... Look, here is the man of the hour now. Zach, this is Emma’s friend, Tisha. Tisha, this is Zach Douglas, the realtor, as well as someone directly responsible for the beauty of this home.”
Burt stepped in front of her, too close, and growled. She had no idea why, but she found herself falling backward, and if not for the quick thinking of Susie, she was sure she might have landed on her ass. Susie helped her to a chair, but before she could ask Burt what the hell he was thinking, he was backed against the wall by the younger man and held a good foot off the floor with a hand around his throat. Tisha just stared. Burt was not a small man. Tisha started to stand but Susie held her back.
“Don’t move. If you do, one or both of them are going to get hurt. And you might as well. Just let them come to terms with this.” She asked Susie what was going on. “Just give them a minute or blood will be shed in your new home.”
A big man came into the room and stood behind Zach, who was holding Burt. It surprised her to no end that her friend didn’t pull his gun and shoot the man, but he was calm, not even fighting the hand that held him. The second man standing behind Zach, speaking calming and slowly to him, kept glancing her way. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he might think this was her fault. It wasn’t until Zach let Burt go that she let out the long breath.
“What the hell are you doing?” Both Burt and Zach looked at her. Tisha wasn’t sure which one she was yelling at, but she’d been afraid and there was no way they were going to do this without some sort of explanation. “I want the two of you to back off, and one of you explain to me what brought out this beast in you.”
The stranger laughed, then Burt grinned. It was the strangest thing she’d ever witnessed. And when Susie started to laugh too, Tisha decided that she’d had enough and stood up. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Zach, but he had the strangest look on his face.
“Don’t.” She paused when Susie spoke. “You’re only going to piss him off, and I’d not do that right now.”
“Who?” They both turned to the group of men, and she knew she meant Zach. Without taking her eyes off him, she spoke to Susie again. “He looks...I was going to say mad, but that’s not it. He looks like he could.... Is he a shifter?”
“Yes. Cougar. Burt, I’m sure you know, is a cat too, but a panther.” Tisha nodded and stood up, leaning heavily on her cane. “You’re his mate.”
“No.” Tisha turned to look at Susie and shook her head. “No. I can’t be. Not that I have anything against shifters or them finding their mates, but it can’t be me. I don’t have...I’m not going to be anyone’s mate or wife, ever.”
Zach moved toward her. He was slow, his body moving like the cat that she knew now that he was. He never touched her, but he was close enough that she could see the golden flecks in his brown eyes. The tawny color of his hair that just peeked from the top of his shirt. When he reached out, his finger just a breath away from touching her cheek, Tisha thought about moving, backing away from it, but she couldn’t. His touch, it seemed, was what she needed more than she needed to breathe.
~~~
Zach could see her fear. And her need to understand. He could almost taste her uncertainty as well. But the need to touch her, just to see if she was real, made his cat rub along his skin. When she took a small step back from him, he wrapped his arm around her to keep her from leaving him.
“Let me go.” He wanted to do as she asked, demanded really, but he found that he liked having her in his arms. “Please, you need to let me go. I can’t be what you need.”
“Why not?” He heard his brother talking in the other room, rounding people up to give them a moment or two. “Would you like to see the upper levels? I heard Susie tell you that we have a way to get you there.”
“No. I want to go home.” He mentioned how there were four bedrooms and two big baths, one of them with a clawfoot tub. “Don’t do this. You have no idea...I can’t be your mate. I’m not well.”
“I can see that.” He pulled her along with him, moving them toward the back of the room where the gilded elevator was. “The elevator was put in when the original owner of the house had a stroke. It was to help him get up and down the floors without assistance. One of the maids who worked here during that time period said that Mr. Grant, the man who lived here, was very nasty and hated when people thought him to be less of a man. The stroke, you see, disabled him quite badly.”
He opened the doors and helped Tisha inside before closing the door behind him. Pressing the button that would get them moving, he was careful not to get too close to her. The enclosure was large, more than big enough to fit a wheelchair, but it had been designed to hold a hospital bed when Mr. Grant’s health was at its worst, Zach told her.
He babbled on about the history that they’d gathered on the house. The people who had worked here, most of them in their late eighties, had more to add. As Zach helped her from the elevator, he showed her the work they’d done on the long hallway.
“Landon, my partner and good friend, said that to leave some of the original colors would appeal to the masses. I just liked it because it was warm looking. The wood in this area of the house had to be redone…the place where the elevator was put in wasn’t sealed well on the roof, and there was water damage.” She touched her fingers to the dark paper and smiled at him. He loved the color of it with the white wainscoting at the bottom. “You like this, wait until you see the master bath.”
“I love the tile here in the hall. I would have thought carpet, but this is so much better.” He told her it had once been covered by carpet, but they thought that it had been taken up because of the wheelchair. “I can see that. It would be harder on a carpet with a chair. I was in one recently. Well, I still use it when I’ve had a particularly hard day.”
“You look tired now.” She felt tired too, like she had run for a long time and the exercise was just catching up to her. After leading her to one of the benches that they’d gotten really inexpensively, he sat beside her but far enough away not to spook her. “You know what I am, what sort of cat I am.”
“Yes. Burt, he’s a panther and has been around me my whole life. I want you to know that I don’t have anything against you, not personally, but I can’t be your mate. Not with what’s happened to me.” He asked her what she thought that might mean to him. “Plenty. I...I don’t know if Emma told you or not, but I was recently hurt pretty badly by a woman. I’m not sure why she did what she did—she’s still out there—but there are two more teachers that taught where I did that have been killed.”
“Emma only said that you’d been hurt. I believe she went to visit you while you were in the other hospital.” Tisha nodded. “This woman, she still looking for you, do you think?”
“Yes. I mean, I really don’t know because I don’t know what prompted her to do this in the first…. I can’t have children. Not ever. She damaged a lot of my insides when she took a hammer to me. I’m lucky to be alive, I know that, but I can’t ever have children because of her actions.”
Zach said nothing. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought about, having children, but he could see where it would bother her. A woman who taught children, he would think, would want some of her own. Instead of talking to her about it, telling her his thoughts, he leaned back on the bench.
“My brothers have children. Not all of them are biological. Mason and Emma have a daughter. Jace and Holly have a new baby boy. My brother Darin, he and Mercedes are going to have one too, and they have Bonnie, Mercedes’s daughter. You’ll get to meet them. And just so you know, Bonnie is young, ten now, but she has met her mate in Patrick. He’s a wolf. Actually, so is she. There was a fight and she nearly died, so she was converted to save her life. My sister-in-law, Susie, you met her, she has this amazing ability with horses. Well, all animals, and some people too.” Tisha said nothing but didn’t leave him either, so he was encouraged. “Logan, my other brother, he is married to Charlie. They own and run the winery at the other end of town. And then there’s my Aunt Georgie, who met her mate recently, and her and Palmer are married now too.”
“So many people.” He nodded and grinned at her. “You have six brothers, five sisters-in-law, and a lot of extended family, it sounds like. You’re very lucky. I just have my dad, Randall, and Burt. There are others, I guess. The staff and all, but for the most part, it’s just been the three of us.” He got up when she did. “I’d really like to see the bathroom. I have a real fondness for big homey bathrooms.”
Taking his cues from her, he walked down the hall with her. Her steps were sure but slow. She was losing energy, and he could see it in the way she moved and spoke. She talked about the wallpaper, the glass door knobs on the rooms they passed, as well as the old frames that held some of the art that they’d found to go in the house. As he took her through the master bedroom to the bath, he saw her eyeing the bed and he had to grin. She wasn’t indifferent to him at all, he thought. Or she needed a nap. And as soon as he opened the bathroom door for her, he knew it was the latter of the two.
“Steady there.” He picked her up when she stumbled while going through the doorway. Carrying her out to the bed, he laid her gently on it. “Do you need something for pain?”
“No, I’m all right.” She closed her eyes and he could see the tears falling now. “Yes, I need something for pain. It’s in my purse in the car. I’ll get it in a moment. I shouldn’t have done this today. I need...I just needed normal.”
Reaching for his brother, he asked him to send someone for her purse. He pulled the large wing backed chair closer to the bed. Taking her hand in his, he held it while she lay there crying, and his heart hurt for her.
“Susie is bringing your purse up to you with a glass of tea. Burt told her that you have to eat something light with it, so she’s also bringing you a few cookies, all right?” She nodded and asked him if she’d passed out. It took Zach a few seconds to realize what she was asking him. “No, I can talk to my family without you knowing. I’m sorry, I should have said that. Burt would like to know, through asking Jace, if you’d like for him to call your father.”
“No. I just need a minute.” Zack told his brother as she continued. “You must think I’m a fool for doing this. I was just going to come here, see the house, and leave. Make an offer if I liked it, but I never meant for me to be up and around this much.”
“I understand. For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking on more than I should as well. It took my family to knock me in the head a few times before I got it. Not to lessen that your injuries are more physically and mentally draining, but I understand about feeling the need to do it all sooner than you should.”
The knock at the door had him going to it. He took the plate and the glass from Susie, and wondered aloud how the showing was going.
“Well. I think you might sell this sooner than you expected.” She looked around him to Tisha. “I talked to Emma a few minutes ago. She said that she’d explain to your dad that you’re at her house and for him to not worry. Is that okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.” After nodding to him, Susie left, closing the door behind her. Zach handed her the glass and the plate, which had a dozen cookies on it, as well as her pain pills still in the bottle. “I want this house.”
“Okay.” He would give her the world if that was what she wanted. “I know that Landon has plans of using the money from the sale of his house to finance the next three we’re working on, but I’m betting I could work something out with him.”
“I don’t understand.” He told her what they did, or what they were attempting to do. “You buy cheap, fix them up, and sell them? That’s wonderful. How many other houses have you done so far?”
“This is the first one we’ve finished. And since I’m having my own house built now, I’m figuring out things to add and take away from my home as well. Like that tub you like so much. I have two in my house. The contractor wasn’t thrilled about the changes, but he’s made it work for me. And I’ve been to a lot of auctions and have been picking up things that I like, enjoy, or have no idea what I’m going to do with it but buy to add later. My barn is filling fast.”
She took her medication and lay back. He could see the moment that it kicked in, taking her under. Instead of leaving her, as he should have to check on things downstairs, he sat with her. Watching her breathing without pain was wonderful. Zach was just dozing off too when Landon touched his mind.
You found her. He told him he had but she was afraid. Not of you. You’re the sweetest kid I know. What’s got her all twisted up? That woman?
I don’t know much about what happened to her. Do you? Landon said that he did, as a matter of fact, he’d been talking to the police and Randall had given him the file on her when asked. I’d like to see it too, or at least have someone talk to me about it. She said that she can’t have any children, as if that’s going to be a deal breaker for me.
To some it would be. To her even, I’m betting. According to her dad, she’s been wanting a houseful of little ones since she was a kid herself. Zach told him that it could still happen for her. Yes, sir. I just knew you’d say that. Told my Katie just when I found out, you’d be good for her. Little Tisha, she’s been given some hard knocks by this woman. Terrified out of her own skin most of the time, and her dad tells me that she has the worst kind of bad dreams you can imagine. He said that her screams will wake up the dead.
He reached for her hand again, and taking it into his he could feel her relax. Zach watched her as Landon told him about the paperwork that he’d be sending over to him. Zach told him thanks, and then he explained about the house.
Never figured that we’d have any offers, much less from your own mate. Well, you should run her out to your house and show her that it’s better than that one. I love what we’ve done to it, would give it to you as a wedding gift if she’d have it, but you show her your house. I’m betting that one there will be on the market again faster than a jackrabbit can take off. Zach laughed and asked him just how fast that was. You should know that I can beat your bottom as quickly as I can hug the stuffing out of you. You behave now and take care of that little woman of yours. She needs it as much as you do.
Zach told him that he would and closed the connection. After yawning three times in as many minutes, he decided that while the chair was nice, it wasn’t big enough for his long legs. Stretching, he moved to the other side of the bed, and pulled the pillows off and tossed them to the floor on the side where she was resting. After throwing the lap blanket on the floor, he lay down. Covering his face with his hat, Zach told himself that he just needed a little nap. It was the last thing he remembered as his mind closed down and his body drifted off.